Using gene arrays, researchers have identified genes whose activity changes with age in 16 different mouse tissues. The study, published in PLoS Genetics, uses a newly available database called AGEMAP to document the process of aging in mice at the molecular level.

As an organism ages, most tissues change their structure (for example, muscle tissues become weaker and have slow twitch rather than fast twitch fibers), and all tissues are subject to cellular damage that accumulates with age. Both changes in tissues and cellular damage lead to changes in gene expression, and thus probing which genes change expression in old age can lead to insights about the process of aging itself.

Previous studies have studied gene expression changes during aging in just one tissue. The new work stands out because it is much larger and more complete, including aging data for 16 different tissues and containing over 5.5 million expression measurements.

Source: EurekAlert